Cable billing systems have a huge number of Codes representing the packages of video that are authorized for a subscriber to view on a set-top box (STB). Each cable location may have their own set of codes or rely on a generic set of codes that are used across the company. Each video package may contain one or more video offerings (i.e., channels or sources).
A typical billing system, in a company delivering a multimedia content to users, may have thousands of rate codes that are used to allow access to video, like a movie package, a sports package, etc. Each video package may contain one or more video offerings (e.g., channels or sources). Some packages may have many numbers of Video Channels in them.
Over the years as the company changes pricing packages to create promotions, new codes are added, but the core video channels often may stay the same in different packages.
For example a typical cable company usually offers about 4-7 packages to customers from basic to premium (basic has fewer channels, premium has more channels). Each has a different grouping of the channels available on the network. Then there are special purpose additions like a sports package, a French-language packages and the like. Over the years the practice has been to create a new package whenever there is a big change in the way the company wants to create annual promotions, so that a total number of different packages offered to customers/users may reach several thousands.